The Sound of Betrayal
by Initial A
Summary: "Carlos…" "Subject CTC4SK-13 will remain silent unless ordered. Restrain him, and take him back to the research and development labs." Carlos' intentions in Night Vale are revealed after the arrival of the yellow helicopters.
1. Chapter 1

**The Sound of Betrayal**

**By: InitialA**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Night Vale.**

* * *

Cecil pounded on the door to the lab. "Carlos? Carlos!"

He glanced behind him, towards the sky, watching for any yellow helicopters. Somewhere in his gut he knew that the lie he'd told over the broadcast, that everything would be fine, was going to fall through sooner rather than later. He'd be StrexCorp meat. Literally, if his research proved true.

Oh, he wasn't stupid. It had taken a few minutes to figure out that the man he'd seen, his double, was someone from nearby. Most of the doubles were similarly employed, yet no one else had reported seeing Cecil's double in the radio station. At home, he'd had the idea to look at other nearby towns and their radio stations. The man he'd seen was part of the Desert Bluffs radio station. From there, Cecil's research led him to Strex. Part research facility, part manufacturing plant, part national business center, their products ranged through just about everything Cecil could ever imagine. They dabbled in medicine, weapons, transportation, infrastructure, all the way down to little things like insurance. However, underneath the floorboards, it seemed like there were just too many dismissed lawsuits, too many missing persons reports gone cold, and too many whispers that all seemed to lead right back to Strex. None could be linked to Strex with any proof, but Cecil recalled how even the Desert Bluffs radio station seemed… well, the station interior was putrid, to be sure. And one evening, he'd listened to the online broadcast of his double's show; it was all too neat. Too picturesque, trying to cover the horror underneath.

At least here at home, they were up front about the terror of everyday life.

Cecil banged on the door again, his glittery polished fingernails digging in to his palms. "Carlos, I really need to talk to you!"

He heard a series of clicks behind him, and the unmistakable sound of a charge warming up. "And we really need to talk to you, Subject CTC4SK-13. Hands and any other non-pedal limbs in the air and turn around slowly."

Cecil raised his hands. Shaking slightly, he started to turn. "Four appendages only, human arms and legs." He managed to keep his voice from wavering.

His heart plummeted. If he wasn't terrified of being shot on the spot, he would have checked to make sure it hadn't actually left his body. Carlos was flanked by two other scientists he knew from visiting the lab, all holding guns that looked like they belonged in a science fiction movie. "Carlos…"

"Subject CTC4SK-13 will remain silent unless ordered. Restrain him, and take him back to the research and development labs."

Cecil tried making eye contact with the two women who were binding his arms behind his back, and shackling his legs together, far enough apart that he could still walk and not get very far if he bolted. They ignored him, and frog-marched him to a waiting yellow van. Cecil twisted, looking over his shoulder at Carlos. His scientist—was he ever his to begin with?—didn't meet his eyes, and spoke into a comms unit: "Subject en route to headquarters. Immediate priorities requested for interrogation, testing, and holding facilities."

Cecil was shoved into the van, and the doors slammed behind him, leaving him in darkness as the van vibrated to life underneath him.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Sound of Betrayal**

**By: InitialA**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Night Vale.**

* * *

The van moved for more than an hour. Cecil tried to make himself somewhat comfortable, managing to sit up after some trial and error, but occasionally the van would take a turn more sharply than expected, and he'd topple over. The third such fall left his right shoulder throbbing painfully in the socket. He took a few deep breaths, trying to calm the stinging in his eyes and the urge to cry out. He pushed himself up again, the muscles in his arm searing in pain as he put weight on it, and tucked himself into a corner.

He tried not to imagine what was about to happen to him. He really tried not to think about Carlos' face, cold and impassable, as he'd ordered his capture. He definitely tried not to think about how much it hurt that Carlos had turned on him. He absolutely failed to stop thinking about any of it.

Finally, the van stopped. The engine's vibration ceased, and Cecil huddled in his corner, afraid for what would happen next. The doors opened, and his two female captors ordered him forward. He inched up as quickly as he could, and they grabbed his arms. He couldn't help it this time, yelling in pain as his right arm was jerked roughly. The yell earned him an ear boxing. Cecil fell silent, and looked around discretely.

They appeared to be outside a sort of factory. The noise was almost deafening: steam vents, workers calling out to each other, machinery running, and what sounded like construction somewhere he couldn't see. Pipes ran in clusters, snaking up the building to where he was now being marched. "Hood 'im," an unfamiliar male voice called.

Something was thrown over his head. He stumbled at the loss of sight; the scientists forced him along anyway. He bit his lip against the pain, and went along quietly.

After too many turns and far too many steps to count his way back out, he was sat in a chair, and the hood was removed. His handcuffs were removed, and replaced by cloth bindings on the chair. Cecil wasn't sure how they thought he could ever escape, but then again he wasn't exactly up to speed on the latest trends in kidnappers' thinking. The women left the room, leaving him completely alone—well, perhaps not, if the mirrored wall to his left had anything to say about it. Aside from the chair he sat in and the one-way mirror, it was a very boring room. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The walls were off-white. There was nothing to look at. In all aspects, it was a terrifying room to be in, but Cecil was frightened and confused and in pain and starting to get a little bit angry, so there really wasn't room for more abject terror.

He was alone for a long time. After what felt like several hour of waiting, he started to meditate; it helped take his mind off of his pain, and compartmentalize his emotions. Every thought of Carlos went to a mental box labeled 'DO NOT OPEN—HAZARDOUS MATERIALS'. He let his anger fizz and settle under his skin like thorny armor. He carefully wrapped up his confusion and placed it aside for later. He shoved his fear to the darkest, smallest corner of his mind: plenty of time to be scared later. If there was a later… no, shove that thought into the corner too.

Distantly, he heard the door open. Cecil breathed deeply, and came out of the meditation. His heart skipped a beat when he saw Carlos. He was about to speak, then stopped; Carlos, the old Carlos (the decoy Carlos? The Carlos façade?), had always said Cecil was more of a talker than a listener—than an _observer_. And maybe that's how he had gotten himself into this mess to begin with, by not listening, not _observing_ what was happening around him until it was too late. So he looked, _really _looked, at Carlos.

The man he'd called his boyfriend was a nervous, twitchy person, with eyes that were constantly looking around, trying to solve the puzzles of Night Vale, _observing_. Perhaps that had been part of the façade. Perhaps that man was actually more nervous about his cover being blown than about saying something he perceived to be stupid over dinner. And yet Cecil couldn't help but feel that this calm, steady-gazed man wasn't the real Carlos. Carlos fidgeted almost constantly. He clicked pens, tapped out rhythms on any surface handy, swayed unconsciously to music, worried his lip or a fingernail. The Carlos in front of him hadn't actually moved more than his eyelids in the five minutes they'd been staring at each other.

Something bigger was happening here.

"Carlos," Cecil began.

"Subject CTC4SK-13 will remain silent. The subject will prepare to submit to interrogation, answering only when spoken to. If the subject acts in accordance, any further testing will comply with StrexCorp Stature 1984.49."

The voice. Something was wrong with his voice. It was too… militarized, that was the word. He sounded like a drill sergeant. Cecil frowned. "Carlos, this isn't you."

The steady blinking doubled for a moment. Cecil's brow furrowed. He dropped his Voice. "Carlos."

Carlos' expression turned vacant. His lips moved for a moment, and then he screwed his eyes shut. His arm moved. Cecil's vision grayed as he was struck on the side of the head. His voice pitched high, "_Carlos!_"

"_Cecil…_"

It was a whisper, barely there, but he heard it all the same. There was a slight commotion outside. Cecil watched as Carlos was dragged out of the room by guards. His head throbbed as the door slammed shut. His heart ached, all but for a tiny spark of hope caused by the sound of his own name.

* * *

((So… who else thinks The Carlos Façade would be a great band name? No? Too busy writing an angry comment at me?))


	3. Chapter 3

**The Sound of Betrayal**

**By: InitialA**

* * *

Carlos _knew_ him. He had been right, this wasn't really him. A mind control device, or brainwashing. Someone was controlling his Carlos. There had been a trap in place all along, but for what? The door opened again. A woman he didn't know walked in. "So sorry about that. We miscalculated your… effects on him," she said. Her voice was light and airy. Cecil supposed that it was meant to be a comforting thing, but after everything that day, it sounded fake.

"What have you done to him?" Cecil demanded, his head protesting the loud sounds.

She apparently didn't have the same concerns about 'keep quiet unless spoken to' that Carlos had had. "Oh? Knocking you around hasn't dulled your spirit a bit, Mr. Palmer. Perhaps that's also our miscalculation; we let you simmer in here too long. Who knows what your powers have done to you…"

This threw him. His head throbbed worse as he blinked, and asked, "Powers?"

She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. Cecil refused to show the shiver that went down his spine. He hurt, everywhere, inside and out, but that spark of hope had given strength to the anger, shielding him from anything else they might throw at him. His name on Carlos' lips was enough armor for a lifetime of pain. "It's so amusing, your little town. So quaint… so full of secrets. We just had to find out more. Oh, we tried a few times, sending in decoys with the high school teams, but someone always rooted them out before long. Then Dr. Olvera was recruited. He had a penchant for the… supernatural. He came to us with a proposal, we granted him the opportunity to study in Night Vale."

"Oh, with the monologue…" Cecil muttered. "At least be more original…"

The woman raised her hand: a remote. She pushed a button. Cecil's chair flattened out immediately. His cloth bindings were replaced with metal. "Such talk, Mr. Palmer. Looks like Stature 1984.49 won't be observed today," the woman said as the door opened again. "It's a pity, though. Your Voice is one aspect of you that we particularly wanted to study…"

"You're very unprofessional, for a scientist," Cecil snapped. The tried to see what was going on, but he was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. He heard wheels rolling across the tile. A drawer opening. Metal clanking together. Rubber snapping.

The woman's face leered above him, that same unsmiling smile gracing her face. "I'm not that kind of scientist, dear. I get results, by whatever means possible. No rules about 'above all, do no harm' apply to me, as long as StrexCorp gets what StrexCorp wants."

Then Cecil saw the scalpel.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Sound of Betrayal**

**By: InitialA**

* * *

"_Carlos…_"

"Cecil?"

His voice echoed through the darkened, empty halls. Carlos looked around the corner before fully entering the hall—you could never be too careful, after all. There was no one in sight. That was weird, Carlos thought as he looked for a door, or perhaps another hallway. He was sure he'd heard Cecil calling him.

He thrust his thumbs through the belt loops in his jeans, patting out the drum solo from "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" on his thighs as he walked. There was a door ahead; he jiggled the handle, and finding it locked, he moved on. "_Subject CTC4SK-13_…"

Carlos stopped, twisting to look behind him. "Hello?"

Silence again. "Har, har, Cecil. Come out of there."

He stood still for several minutes, before warily turning and continuing down the hall. He passed another locked door. "_Restrain him, and take him back to_…"

Carlos whirled. "Cecil, this isn't funny! I get it; urban spelunking was a stupid date idea! But cut the crap already!"

Nothing. Carlos ran his hands through his hair nervously, mussing it to medium-panic puff levels. He was hearing things, that was all. The wind, making strange sounds. That's what the scientist in him said. The scared human said something different, and he wasn't about to ask what that something was. Carlos turned and walked down the next hallway. Was it his imagination, or was it getting darker?

"…_interrogation, testing, and holding_…"

The scared human won out. Carlos sprinted down the hallway, and turned down two more before leaning against a wall to catch his breath. His logical brain whirred to catch up: unless he was going in circles (he wasn't), there were no stairs, no doors out, no windows so far. There were doors that might lead to stairs and other doors and windows, but they were locked. There were whispers coming from the doors, a man's faint voice. Cecil wasn't here.

His breathing slowed. Cecil wasn't here.

Carlos wasn't sure where "here" was.

There was another door ahead. He stared at it as his thoughts reorganized themselves. He was a scientist. Fear was easily defeated with facts. He could gather facts. Like, do all the doors whisper, or just the ones before? And if he listened hard enough, maybe he could figure out who the voice belonged to. It wouldn't help him get out, or find Cecil, but it would answer some of his questions. He took a breath to calm his nerves, and walked to the door. "_Subject CTC4SK-13 will remain silent. The subject will prepare to submit to interrogation, answering only when spoken to. If the subject acts in accordance, any further testing will comply with StrexCorp Stature 1984.49_..."

Carlos stepped back. "_Carlos, this isn't you_…"

No. And yet… it was.

His own voice was coming from behind the doors. He took another step back. The sounds faded for a moment, and then, clear as anything, he heard Cecil's Voice. "**Carlos.**"

The door, and the hallway, melted around him. Carlos' vision swam, his knees buckled. "Cecil…"

The world righted itself as Carlos sank to his knees on the floor. The door was silent now. His breathing was shaky. After a few minutes, his legs felt less like jelly and more like skeleton, tissue, and muscle mass, and he felt comfortable enough to stand. Now, however, there was a high-pitched buzz coming from somewhere. Carlos could only look around once before the buzz amplified to an unbearable pitch. He cried out, his hands going to his ears, but the sound seemed to be everywhere, piercing every part of his body. His eardrums felt ready to burst.

Then there was an unearthly screech. And then there was nothing.

* * *

**((Apologies on this taking several weeks. I took an impromptu hiatus to work on my YouTube projects, and then I got sideswiped by other fandoms exploding with news and OTP goodness. You know how these things go. I hope this double-upload made up for it!))**


	5. Chapter 5

**The Sound of Betrayal**

**By: InitialA**

* * *

Screaming. Smoke.

_كl اadل dوeسa ಹೇ6J cમારી צ z_

There is pain, and heat, and carelessness. The pain is sweet, a release, the feeling of tension collapsing into an ecstasy as your lover collapses against your sweaty body. There are bodies that mattered once to someone, but those someones have long since disappeared into the ether. The heat is searing, and yet he doesn't care.

His mind is gone.

There is only Another.

Another that has been chained in the dark recesses for too long, waiting for the seal to break, for someone to come and…

Play.

Playing. The screaming bodies that now scream no more were only dolls after all, and like their child-safe counterparts contain only stuffing when their limbs are gone—and isn't it so funny, that adults are not safe for children. The very beings that bring them into the world are the least safe of all for these tiny sparks of life that can be bruised and snuffed out with a single twitch.

They are all merely sparks of life, candle flames pleading to remain lit in the endless wind of the universe. And they are His to command. So many flames being snuffed out…

There is a roar around Him. White eyes lift upwards in dim interest; He doesn't flinch at the third fireball—or is it the fifth?

"_CECIL!"_

His arms raise. The fires of Hell are nothing in comparison to a Wrath of this nature, where the very earth crumbles at His feet, where the wind scatters poison from His pores, where His mouths are many and devouring of those who came too close, where lightning entangles with His temporary body and twines around him like a cat, like an extra set of limbs or twelve; Hell hath no fury like Another's broken chains.

"_CECIL!"_

There is a Voice. And the Sky breaks at the sound of His Voice, raining ash and sulfur onto the Earth.

"_CECIL!"_

And yet… at the edges of His consciousness… there is a _voice_.

There is a _voice_ and there is a _candle flame_. The candle flame is dying, but it emits a _voice_ all the same, bursts of orange insisting on warping the blueness of death into some semblance of life, and He takes a moment to wonder _why_. Why fight it, when the eternal embrace of emptiness and ether waits for its light, where there are no _voices_ and there is only His Voice to lull the ether to peace?

The candle flame grows stronger still, a branch of fire stretching from its nest, and His lightning is there to greet it; fire only enrages other fire, no matter the form, and the flame ignites into a column, and there is the _voice_: _"CECIL!"_

And then He retreads, as the other, the amplifier of His Voice, reacts.

And he is desperate.

And He does not understand.

For what is the _point_ of desperation, of _affection_, for a candle flame?

"_There doesn't __**need**__ to be a point! That he __**is**__ the point, that he affects me enough to __**be**__ a point, is all that matters! In fact, what's the point of __**you**__?"_

And for the first time, He is amused. The other does not insist on removing Him. The other catches his candle flame as the building shakes and collapses and explodes around them. The candle flame is flickering, the _person_ is coughing through ashen lips.

The other, the entity, the _Cecil_, touches the person, the _Carlos_, and He understands. The building groans, and the roof caves in, one floor after another.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"Cecil…" Carlos' voice was raspy.

Cecil's head lolled on his shoulder. His entire body felt like it was made of lead. "Carlos…"

"What the hell… just happened…"

Cecil forced his eyes open. The fluorescent lights were too bright. And why was he on the floor, anyway? "I… I don't…"

"You… you were… some kind of…" Carlos' voice stuck on whatever the next word was going to be, and there was a sound like he was rolling over before going into a coughing fit. There were some hacking and spitting noises, and if he had cared to, Cecil would have dry-heaved at the noise. For the moment, he felt too tired to care. "I'm more interested… in what… the hell… you were doing…"

Carlos hocked a loogie, and cleared his throat. "That… was something I didn't know about."

"You work for Strex."

"Worked, I think, is a better word now, thanks to you."

"You tried to kill me."

Carlos was silent for a moment. Cecil forced himself to sit more upright; they were in his booth at the radio station. A feeling like ice dumped down the back of his shirt made him sit up straighter, though he had no recollection as to why. Carlos said, very quietly, "At Strex, there were whispers about… experiments on people. Whispers, mind you, for what I hope are obvious reasons. And there were a few of us who were asked to participate in a simple neuroimaging study, people in the company. Wanted to see "what kind of brains Strex wanted to hire" or something like that. Only… after I got to the neuroimaging labs, I don't remember what happened after that. I mean, I do, but I don't… everything is kind of fuzzy for the next sixteen hours. They said… they said that it was normal… and I'm a physicist, with some engineering background… I didn't think to look into _why_, I mean I don't have the background but I would have been able to do a simple _check_, it's not like I wouldn't have understood _any_ of it… it just… always slipped my mind…"

Cecil absently lifted his arm and rubbed his neck to rid himself of the tingling feeling there. "So they… like, sleeper agented you or whatever?"

Carlos shrugged. The radio host tried again, "So that wasn't you? That pointed a gun at me and had me manhandled and broke my shoulder?"

The scientist met his eyes with despair. "I…I did that?"

His muscles screamed in protest as he lunged, and buried himself into Carlos' chest. Carlos froze; awkwardly, his arms came up and held him too lightly, too cautiously. Cecil looked up. Carlos' face was still ashy under his tanned skin. "Carlos?"

"Cecil… do you remember how we got back here?"

Cecil blinked once, twice, and slowly shook his head. He wasn't entirely sure which one of them started to tremble first, or if Carlos smelled sulfur, too.


End file.
